FullCodePress 2010: Three Amazing Websites in 24 Hours

The third ever FullCodePress is underway in Wellington, New Zealand. This year the competition has stepped up a notch, with not two but three teams competing to each build a website for a different non-profit organisation in only 24 hours.At the six-hour mark, the teams are well and truly ensconced in discussion, planning, wire-framing, and the first hints of coded designs are appearing on the live sites, which you can access at any stage throughout the contest.

The coveted FullCodePress trophy,donated by SitePoint

As in previous years, SitePoint is one of the sponsors. SitePoint’s community manager, Sarah Taylor, is present at the Wellington Town Hall, along with yours truly, and the excitement in the venue is almost tangible—there is so much talent working together in these rooms, so there are big expectations for what kind of sites these three teams will be able to produce.Here’s a brief rundown of each of the teams.

Team Australia

Hourly Screenshots

The Australian team are determined to learn from previous years’ mistakes. Regular readers of this blog may recognise some of the team members (James and Lachlan are both employees of 99designs, and Adam is a former employee). In addition to the obvious advantage that many of the team have worked together, they’ve spent a good amount of time getting to know each other and preparing their infrastructure and approach well in advance. Coming into the competition the team were relaxed and quietly confident, but the introduction of a team nickname, the Codaroos, shows just how seriously they are taking this competition.Lachlan Donald, the team’s developer, has made the bold move of putting together a public GitHub repository, so anyone interested in monitoring the log of changes to the site’s code base can follow along.

Team USA

Hourly Screenshots

The sense of national pride with Team USA is very strong, with team members consistently declining invitations for a quiet beer at the pub in the lead-up to the event in favour of “going home to sleep.” It’s possible that the team is very conscious of not repeating the 1988 men’s basketball Dream Team’s debut Olympic efforts (despite the team containing a superstar line-up, they came home with a bronze medal). It’s also possible that the team may have cottoned on to the Australians’ rumoured plans to sabotage their game by plying them full of large amounts of potent alcohol.While appearing to be very focussed, there is a cheeky sense of confidence evident in the team’s approach, with early screenshots displaying a gaudy colour scheme and a scrolling marquee. Given Team USA’s designer, Jason Santa Maria, delivered a riveting presentation at Webstock Mini on Thursday night about typographic principles, there are rumours flying that Santa Maria’s design skills may not be up to the challenge under such intense pressure.

Hourly Screenshots

The CodeBlacks have the most to lose with this year’s competition. Having won back-to-back premierships, these kiwi internerds are well aware of the expectations that their nation has placed upon them. Of the three teams, the CodeBlacks are the using the least amount of organisation materials, such as post-it notes, butcher paper and other tools. They also seem to be the quietest of the three teams, working mostly in silence on most occasions that I’ve popped my head in the door.That said, the team does have the home-ground advantage, and are known to be taking advice from one of last years’ victorious CodeBlacks, the talented Darren Wood (read SitePoint’s interview with Darren from last year). And press coverage in national media has ensured that even New Zealand’s non-geeky residents are well aware of the team’s goals to create the first ever three-peat in FullCodePress history.Who will be victorious? Follow along live as the websites as they are built and decide for yourself.

Matthew Magain is a UX designer with over 15 years of experience creating exceptional digital experiences for companies such as IBM, Australia Post, and sitepoint.com. He is the co-founder of UX Mastery, and recently co-authored Everyday UX, an inspiring collection of interviews with some of the best UX Designers in the world.